03/06/2026
It’s hard to believe that exam season has come around again so quickly. This can be a time of intense emotion for many young people and their families. While the Junior and Leaving Certificate exams are academic milestones, they also carry a lot of emotional weight and can bring up anxiety, self-doubt, pressure, fear of failure and uncertainty about the future. It can even represent a time of grief and loss around changes and endings.
As parents, it’s natural to want to encourage and support your child. Therefore, understanding what may be happening beneath the surface emotionally can make an enormous difference to how supported and regulated they feel.
For many young people they feel that pressure comes from many different directions — school expectations, peer comparisons, social media, and family hopes. And often it can also be the pressure they put on themselves.
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